Revision as of 06:12, 26 April 2013

(Sorry for the inconvenience)

Editor: please update template:UseTOC/9.2

Translator: please use {{UseTOC{{putVers}}|TOC}}

Protection (edit): Edited by: FuzzyBot

Figure 9.4a: MythTV Configuration GUI

MythTV[1] is an open source software digital video recorder (DVR) that is an alternative to Tivo or Windows Media Center. It allows you to pause and rewind live TV shows, skip commercials, schedule TV show recordings, and control a set-top box[2] using an infrared remote or firewire. In order to use MythTV, you will need a video capture card. Hardware requirements are described on the MythTV Wiki[3].

In PC-BSD®, webcamd is used to provide the drivers for video capture cards. This is enabled by default, meaning any devices supported by Video for Linux[4] should “just work”.

During the installation of PC-BSD® the installer provided an option to install MythTV. If you wish to install MythTV afterwards, use Control Panel ➜ System Manager ➜ System Packages ➜ Misc. Once MythTV is installed, an entry should be added to the "Multimedia" section of the application menu of your desktop. You can also run MythTV from the command line by typing /usr/local/share/pcbsd/scripts/mythtv.sh.

Running MythTV for the First Time

Figure 9.4b: MythTV Configuration Screen

The PC-BSD® version of MythTV provides an initialization script to properly setup the database backend used by MythTV. The first time you run MythTV, you will be prompted for the superuser password in order to configure MythTV. After inputting the superuser password, a console will temporarily open indicating that the MySQL service is starting and that the MySQL database is being created. Once that is complete, you will see the configuration GUI shown in Figure 9.4a.

The initial screen will prompt you to select your "Country" and "Language". Once the desired options are highlighted, click the "Save" button. You should see the MythTV front-end screen shown in Figure 9.4b.

Navigate to the configuration screen you wish to access, then press enter. To leave a screen, press ESC. To exit the front-end completely, press ESC from the main configuration menu.

Chapters 10-12 of the MythTV Howto[5] demonstrate the possible configurations and how to schedule recordings.